Thursday, December 12, 2013

Each month features a pin-up inspired by a classic video game console. Above is Miss Odyssey, with a simple design inspired by the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey from 1972. (Click here for a video game history lesson if you're unfamiliar!)

Monday, December 9, 2013

I will be in NYC this weekend for Crazy 4
Cult! I was honored to design the poster this year, copies of which will
be for sale at the show.

It was an absolute blast having free reign over the design of the poster
and getting to pick and choose all the movie characters I wanted to
include. But it was a challenging piece as well; mostly because I
was very excited about being asked to do it, and I was feeling
the self-inflicted pressure that comes with such a cool assignment.

Also at the show will be a limited print featuring all
the cult movie characters I illustrated.

Book cover art by N.C. Winters

And on Sunday I will
be participating in a book signing of the new Crazy 4 Cult art book,
alongside many of the other amazing artists who are featured in its
pages.

Please stop by if you're in the New York area, or stay tuned to the Gallery 1988 website to check out when all the pieces go up for sale online!

Friday, December 6, 2013

Here's my piece for the Required Reading art show which opens tonight at Gallery 1988 West. It's inspired by Fahrenheit 451, one of my favorite books of all time. The title I gave it is Celsius 232, (see what I did there?)

The idea for the drawing itself came from a book jacket I did for a design assignment in college. It was really crazy looking back at my original version of this because my art has grown and evolved so much since college, and that doesn't seem too long ago. I, and I think most artists, sort of look at things like that as both and good and bad, because it means you're improving, but also makes you feel like some of your older work isn't quite as good as it seemed at the time.

On a related note, I've always loved when animated shows get their own movies because they amp everything up; like the animation, the effects, the music, the story, etc. The Powerpuff Girls Movie is one of my favorite examples of that, and really one of the only well-done examples I can think of from recent history, aside from maybe The Simpsons Movie. I love when they keep the essence of a show and add polish for the big screen, as opposed to making it CG and thinking that's enough. Not that I dislike CG, but I would love it if, for example, Underdog, Yogi Bear, and the upcoming Peabody and Sherman movie had been done in a polished hand-drawn version of the original shows.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Here's an X-Men drawing I did just for fun in my spare time. I read a few X-Men comics a while back and really started to appreciate the pink, blue, and yellow color schemes of their uniforms, so I wanted to do a drawing that stuck to those colors as much as possible.

I got the bug to do a pin-up calendar a while ago, and the more I thought about it the more it made sense. It would be a lot of fun to do, good for a semi-long-term personal project, and would ultimately be something I could offer for sale via my site.

As a designer and video game enthusiast I've always had a special, if weird, appreciation for the design of old video game hardware, and that seemed like a unique theme for the calendar that would also make for fun drawings.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Here are my pieces for this year's Artmares, a Halloween themed art show put on by East End Main Street, and featuring work by artists local to the Charleston, WV area. This year I decided to combine two of my favorite pop culture properties and have Adventure Time characters dressed as the cereal monsters. Any self-respecting Halloween nerd will tell you that this was a big year for cereal monster fans, as they re-released the long discontinued flavors Yummy Mummy and Fruit Brute.

You can see all the other amazing Artmares pieces if you check out my friend Rudy's coverage of the show over on his blog, PopCult. Photo credit for the top image goes to Rudy as well.

Friday, October 11, 2013

I am very excited to show off my piece for Hero Complex Gallery's The Walking Dead art show, which is an official collaboration with the series and AMC.

The exhibition opens this evening, so please check it out if you are in the LA area, and keep an eye out for more pieces showing up online.

My piece is based around my favorite characters, Maggie and Glenn (even though he spells his name the more traditional way.) I wanted to add some humor to the idea of a romance in midst of a zombie apocalypse.

Friday, September 6, 2013

Here are my pieces for the 3NES Show which opens this evening at Bottleneck Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Each participating artist created work based on Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid.

My thoughts going into these pieces were that I wanted to stick closely to the original NES games, as opposed to branching out into subsequent games, and I wanted to base them around the female characters in each game. I also knew that I wanted to do some action scenes (which I haven't done recently,) and lately I've had an itch to draw a gnarly monster, so drawing Ganon was able to take care of that for me.

I've seen some of the other pieces for this show and they are all fantastic. Seriously, it looks like everybody went above and beyond for this one.

Prints of these pieces will be for sale at the show, so if you are in the Brooklyn/New York area please stop by!

Friday, August 30, 2013

Friday, August 2, 2013

Last month I was a part of the Adventure Time and Regular Show art show at Mondo Gallery in Austin, Texas; an official collaboration between Mondo and Cartoon Network. I've done several Adventure Time pieces, so I decided to try my hand at a character I hadn't drawn before, Breakfast Princess. If you watch Adventure Time then you know that there are tons of princess characters based on just about any crazy thing you can think of, but I think Breakfast Princess may be my favorite.

Friday, July 26, 2013

This is my piece for Gallery 1988's We Made Them Do It art show, which opens tonight in LA.

Gallery 1988 kick-started a trend when they opened in 2004, and this show is their commentary on the flood of pop culture galleries and shows that have sprung up across the country over the last decade. The idea was for artists to take an outlandish or obscure piece of media they thought they'd never see an artistic tribute to, and make it a reality.

I chose Americas Funniest Home Videos, which I think fits the theme perfectly. I don't know why, but I just got this image in my head of Bob Saget looking very serious and distressed right before going out on stage to become the goofy and bad-joke-cracking host we remember him being. It just struck me as really funny to think about the serious and/or human side of such a silly and family-friendly childhood show.

In keeping with the theme of the show, the title of the piece is "You Might Be a Star Tonight," which sounds like it's going for some sort of serious message, but is actually just a line from the show's theme song.

Friday, July 19, 2013

If you're lucky enough to be at Comic Con right now or through the rest of the weekend then you can pick up one of these prints for FREE at the Geek & Sundry lounge at Jolt'n Joe's. I'm not sure what the specifics of their availability are, but I am so excited that I was asked to make this piece for fans to have signed by Felicia Day.

Here are a few photos of Felicia signing them, from the Geek & Sundry Facebook page:

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

It's been the talk of the town, and now you can own some Sharknado prints if you're heading to the San Diego Comic Con this week. The prints are an official collaboration between Gallery 1988 and the SyFy network. (I know, spell check, I'm sorry, but they changed the name to have Ys, there's nothing I can do.) I'm pretty excited to be a part of this cultural phenomenon in some small way. There are three prints available, and above is the one I contributed.

I watched the movie before starting on the drawing, and while my friends and I are no strangers to seeking out the worst and most obscure movies to enjoy, I have to say that Sharknado was a unique experience. I think that's mainly because it's a low budget movie that is very purposefully silly and over-the-top. At first that may sound obvious, but in my experience these kinds of movies are either one or the other, meaning that they are either: A) very low budget but a genuine attempt at serious film making, or B) regular budget with intentional silliness that may try to parody low budget. Both types usually create unintentional humor, which is why they make for fun watching with friends.

Anyway, that's probably way too much analysis. Enjoy some cool artwork at Comic Con, and if you feel like it, mail a poor, east-coast dwelling artist any extra convention exclusives you may get!

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

As a kid I often found myself playing video games as player 2, usually either because the other kid was older or because I was (and am) pretty shy and non-assertive. Because of that I still to this day have a fondness for Luigi, the ultimate second player character. One of my favorites of the newer Mario games is Super Mario 3D Land, where they bring back the famous Tanooki suit power-up. If you play as Luigi in that game, however, the suit is not the familiar raccoon but rather a fox instead. For whatever reason I thought this was just about the coolest thing ever; I think because I'm such a Nintendo nerd and I'm fascinated by the design of Mario games. So here is my tribute to player two which comes to you in 2013, Nintendo's official Year of Luigi.

Friday, June 21, 2013

I'm a big fan of The Lord of the Rings films and books, and I've always wanted to take a crack at drawing Gollum. He's my favorite because he's not allied with the good guys or the bad guys, yet still plays a huge part in the story.

When I saw Return of the King for the first time I really enjoyed what a good job they did with the ending. It's a tall order to make three, three-hour-long movies and have the whole thing lead up to a ring being thrown in a lava pit rather than having a huge battle with big bad guy himself, but they pulled off in spades, and it's one of my favorite movie endings of all time. The music, the red glow of the color palette; it's all so great. I'm also big on science fiction and fantasy universes having their own rules, and I love the fact that the ring becomes too heavy for Frodo, and even though Sam can't carry it on his own, he can carry Frodo while Frodo has the ring. Kind of like how the Hulk can pick up Thor while he's holding his hammer, but not the hammer itself (and this post has probably just become to nerdy for its own good, so I digress...)

My show is up through June 22, so if you are in
the LA area please stop by Gallery 1988 East! You can purchase prints
of all the pieces at the Gallery's online store.

Friday, June 14, 2013

I was especially happy with this this piece because I felt like it was a simple idea that I personally hadn't seen done before: a flyer for a comic convention in a fictional city filled with actual super heroes and villains. It presented me with some unique challenges in terms of taking characters who already wear costumes, having them dress up as different characters, and yet still be recognizable as who they are. My biggest worry was that they would come off as just regular costumed convention-goers rather than the actual Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn. I think the idea comes off well, though, with a lot of credit probably going to Ivy's green skin.

As far as choosing the costumes, I figured Harley wouldn't dream of dressing up as anyone other than Mr. J; Indy seemed like a good fit for Catwoman given the whip and love of treasure, and probably the biggest "ah-ha!" moment of the whole piece was when I figured out a creative way to make Ivy look like a Mario Bros piranha plant. I see a lot of girls at conventions now who have made these extremely clever hybrid costumes that combine the visuals of a specific character with normal clothes (I think the most prevalent idea is dresses that look like the Daleks from Dr. Who,) so I would love to see somebody actually try this piranha plant hair thing in real life.

My show is up through June 22, so if you are in
the LA area please stop by Gallery 1988 East! You can purchase prints
of all the pieces at the Gallery's online store.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

This piece is based on the character Codex from Felicia Day's web series The Guild. My girlfriend introduced me to the show, and she also deserves credit for giving me the idea for this piece when I was coming up with new stuff to include in my gallery show.

I know Codex doesn't usually carry a sword, and I knew going in that including the incorrect weapon might get me in hot water with fans, but I really thought it would be cool to emphasize the battle aspect of the MMORPG video games the series pays homage to; just to depict the character in bit of a different way. (If you look closely, I included her usual staff as an engraving on the sword as nod to the fact that, yes, the sword was on purpose, haha)

Also, there's this:

Felicia Day loved it and is framing one to hang in her office! This is just about the biggest compliment for this piece I could ever imagine, and an amazing thrill. A big thanks goes out to Felicia and her assistant Annie!

My show is up through June 22, so if you are in
the LA area please stop by Gallery 1988 East! You can purchase prints
of all the pieces at the Gallery's online store.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

This piece is a reference to an episode of Adventure Time where Jake dresses as a milkman to infiltrate and negotiate a hostage situation. I thought the design of Jake in his milkman getup was great, and the unexpected subject matter of the episode was hilarious to me. (If you watch Adventure Time you know that most episodes are very fantasy-oriented, so a hostage situation at a convenience store is not something you immediately expect to see.)

I tend to spend a lot of time on each drawing I do; I play around with them and add lots of stuff here and there until, without realizing it, I end up with what I like to call a "complicated" drawing. I knew that time-wise if I wanted to have enough pieces for this show I would need to take on some simpler works, and this drawing was the beginning of that effort. And to be clear I don't mean to say that a "simpler" drawing is worse or less important, I just think I have a bad habit of thinking a drawing isn't finished unless I've spent a lot of time on it. Even now that all the work for the show is done I've been trying to take on some more simpler stuff, which can actually be harder, yet make for some cooler images.

My show is up through June 22, so if you are in
the LA area please stop by Gallery 1988 East! You can purchase prints
of all the pieces at the Gallery's online store.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

There isn't much to this piece, just a simple pin-up for the sake of doing a fun drawing. I thought the repetition of a bank of skee-ball machines would make for cool imagery, (plus a skee-ball pin up was something I had never seen before,) and then from there I just had fun with it by adding things like the sash made of tickets. It actually took quite a bit of playing around with color and things to figure out how I wanted all the details to look, and probably the biggest challenge was making sure the girls didn't get lost in the background.

I thought this piece might get lost among the other more complicated drawings at my show, but I was really happy that a few people let me know how much they liked it.

My show is up through June 22, so if you are in
the LA area please stop by Gallery 1988 East! You can purchase prints
of all the pieces at the Gallery's online store.

Friday, June 7, 2013

This piece is based on Inherit the Wind, one of my favorite movies of all time. I could go on all day listing quotes from the film and explaining why I love it, but I'll spare you all that and offer a shorter explanation for those who haven't seen it: It's based on the famous 1925 "Scopes Monkey trial" where a high school teacher was arrested for trying to teach the theory of evolution to his class. The movie only draws inspiration from the real-life events, and all the characters and scenarios are fictionalized. The bottom line of the story is that neither religion nor science is on trial, but rather the right to think (though simplifying the message this much is a disservice to this amazing piece of cinema; go watch it!) Thinking for yourself and making up your own mind about things is a value that is very important to me, hence why I love the movie and its clever messages so much.

As far as the style of the piece, main character Bert Cates is played by actor Dick York, who you may remember from the TV series Bewitched. That show had an animated intro where its stars were shown as cartoon caricatures, so I thought it would be fun to draw York as he appeared in that intro, and then use the same style for the rest of the piece as well.

My show is up through June 22, so if you are in
the LA area please stop by Gallery 1988 East! You can purchase prints
of all the pieces at the Gallery's online store.